Wednesday, October 23, 2013

"It's No Them, It's Me"

When I was writing for television, particularly when I was
writing episodes rather than running a show, I would never force myself to write
when I wasn’t feeling well.

Writers are like delicate machines – Maseratis of the Keyboard, we like to believe – and there is the
fear that any imbalance or imperfection in the system will reflect itself in
the outcome, feeling blah leading to “blah” writing.

(When you’re running a show, or on facing an un-movable
deadline, such indulgences are not possible, and you do the best you can,
sometimes discovering that being sick made you concentrate harder and you
actually did better work.Isn’t that
interesting?I’ve seen the same thing happen
with athletes who play out of their minds under the burden of a really bad flu.I love comparing writers with athletes, although
this time, I am not entirely full of baloney. )

I am currently a number of blog posts ahead, which I like to
be, not for the “breathing room”, but because when I go away, I have residual
blog post material to regale you with while I am otherwise engaged.Still, aside from not wanting to eat up the
“ahead” material, as an habitual practice, I require myself to write something
for this venue five days a week, sick or not, unless it’s heart surgery and the
recovery therefrom, a circumstance under which all bets are – hopefully temporarily
– off.

The result is – and you can take this to the bank – a daily
as-truthful-as-I-can-deliver-it version of the story I am trying to tell – or
retrieve from the enveloping mists of time.I also require myself to be on my best possible behavior, maintaining a “Company’s
coming” mentality, insuring what I am exposing to public view at least
minimally “presentable.”

You may have noticed that I have ceased and desisted from
writing about politics.The reason for
that is is that I am too depressed by the current situation, and have no desire
to disseminate the gloom.In addition, despite
my unceasing need for blog-writing material, there are still areas of opinion
and experience I have circumvented because they make me look worse than the
“worse” I actually allow you to see.If
you can believe that.And, assuming you
harbor certain darker views and secrets of your own, you can.

In terms of content… it’s funny.When I think about what I do – and have
always done – for my work, I say to others – and to myself –

“I make stuff up.”

The thing is,

I don’t.

The thing more truthfully
is,

I can’t.

I tell my stories as best as I can remember them.I may – though never deliberately – get my facts
wrong, I may exaggerate slightly for effect, I may inflate the seriousness of circumstances
for (hopefully) comedic effect. But I
have never told a story I portray as “This happened”, when it actually, in
fact, did not.

I am simply not that kind of writer.

I once said – possibly to someone else, though it may have
just been to myself – that I do not believe in “make believe.”I probably do, when others write it.But I do not believe I can pull “make
believe” off myself.

Meaning,

I cannot produce a piece of writing which, even though
readers know it’s fiction from the get-go, they are still caught up in its
elements as if what I was writing about were actually transpiring events.I am in awe of those who can pull that feat
of literary hypnotism off.Which is not
the same as saying I read them.I
generally don’t, preferring instead, to read history, which is based on
researched facts, albeit subjectively selected and assembled ones.

I recently read about a journalist-turned-fiction-writer who
found it difficult to abandon their “Just the facts” newspaper training and
engage in flights of fictional, literary fancy.But little by little, they reported, they unshackled themselves from
such content limitations and by their third novel, they had a bear rampaging through
the streets of downtown Chicago.

There is no previous training that conditions me against
venturing beyond the boundaries of factual constriction and making the imagined
seem credible.(And let me make it clear
that I do not claim any moral superiority over writers who do.) For me, it is simply a matter of
temperament.

I cannot make stuff up.

Why?

Because I’m afraid I’ll get caught.(And subsequently punished.)

Getting caught (and subsequently
punished) for doing what?Making stuff
up?That’s what writers are supposed
to do.And by the way, you made up everything
you wrote for television.

Except for (a seven-episode and then cancelled series I
created called) Family Man, all of whose
stories actually happened to me in real life.

That was seven
scripts.You wrote or co-wrote ninety or
so other scripts that were all made up, weren’t they?So what the heck are you talking about?

I don’t know.Maybe
blog writing is different.All I know is
that’s exactly the way I feel.I cannot
make anything up.